Fifth Weekend

It's hard to believe we have been here five weekends already! More than 10% of our experience is behind us -and I am so glad that I started writing about it when we got here. Though individual days may be long, the year is short and I know it's going to go quickly. I don't want to reach the end and wonder what we did while we were here. We are starting to plan our activities for Christmastime when Jeff's mom and dad come to visit.

After our long bus journey on Friday, we completely forgot to tune in to Disney on Friday night. Ah, well. They didn't seem to miss it too much!

Generally on the weekends there is brunch and supper, but this weekend since there was a group here for a conference, they served three meals in the dining room. The boys were excited they got to have breakfast and lunch, as well as dinner, on Saturday! They still eat cornflakes with sugar and strawberries, but for some reason think this is an amazing delicacy and they get very excited about that as a breakfast option. They also have some really good rolls out at breakfast and brunch -they are wheat bread with several types of seeds in them. I'm sort of surprised the boys like them so much, since they generally are quite picky about breads -but they love them as well. Svea finds them a bit too tough for her tiny teeth, but she likes getting a piece anyway. My favourite way to eat them is with brie and raspberry jam. Delightful! My jaw is a bit sore from them, however, like when I used to eat bagels regularly. It's a minor inconvenience that I'll gladly take, if it means I can have these for breakfast on the weekends.

After breakfast on Saturday, the boys got to stay for a while and play with their friend Thøger. He will be 6 in a couple of weeks, and they really are good friends. They have the same mentality, it seems, and outlook on life. I think for the time being it's good that they don't speak the same language, because there's no telling what kind of mischief the three of them could get into if they could communicate better!

Lately we have had a lot (a lot!) of varieties of fish for the meals. I don't mind fish, but Jeff and the boys don't particularly care for it much. We all have a small portion when that's on the menu (as it often is in this part of the world). We were talking on our way to lunch how great it would be to have some frikkadeller (meatballs), or a lasagna that we'd had three times the first week we were here, and then not since. We got to lunch and it was meatballs! And we got to dinner and it was lasagna! We're hoping that putting these two great things together on the same day doesn't mean a few more weeks of just fish.... but we'll see! The kids still manage to eat constantly, so they are always able to find something they enjoy. It's nice that the food is always served buffet style and you take what you want. Svea eats pretty much anything -though she prefers it if it's on someone else's plate! Dinner on Sunday evening was leftover pork roast from Friday, but they had changed it up and made it in a sort of tomato-coconut sauce with a variety of vegetables in it. It was fantastic! The sauce was great on its own as well, served over rice. We might need to find a recipe for that one so we can make it at home also.

We had thought about going to Ribe on Sunday afternoon, but it turned out to be quite rainy and we decided it was better not to walk around old sites with kids, in the rain. Hopefully there will be some more nice days before the fall starts in earnest. The kids were a bit stir-crazy being inside all day, though. We sent the boys outside a few times, but they weren't all that excited about that either. During the afternoon, I decided to try to calm them all down a bit by setting up a coloring contest -the "winner" gets 5Kr. I picked the pictures, and they all three sat down to colour.

I don't think Svea ever took the caps off her markers, but she had fun too. It was fun to see the three of them sitting together working on the same activity. Torben hasn't finished his yet, so the judging cannot take place. I imagine it will cost me 15Kr, though.

Anders thought it was fun to stick a pencil behind his ear, and asked me to take a picture.

Torben asked me to do the same, though he has a hard time being still long enough to take a picture. For some reason they both think everything is a movie.

For a while, Torben was running down the street like this, and his pants billowed up like pantaloons. It was so fun to watch -he really is his own unique person! We asked why he was collecting so many sticks, and he just said he likes to collect sticks. And wouldn't it be cool if he could bring the sticks to school for the next campfire. He thought it would be great if he got to provide the campfire sticks.